How-To Geek

The Ford Ranger MS-RT isn’t trying to be another hardcore off-road pickup. Instead, it leans into something very different for this segment—a proper street-focused take on Ford’s midsize truck.

Planning on buying new tools for summer DIY projects or home repairs? If so, you don't want to miss Home Depot's huge Memorial Day sale, which ends in under 48 hours. While we've seen buy-one-get-one deals in the past, right now there's an even better deal on DeWALT tools and battery packs.

For years, switching to new Outlook felt like a downgrade. That's no longer the case. Here's why the version you've been avoiding has quietly become the one worth using.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds returns to Paramount+ this summer with its penultimate fourth season, which fans are curious to see after that very strange third season. The show has been renewed for a fifth and final season, which is expected to premiere in 2027 and will wrap up Captain Pike’s (Anson Mount) era. Series stars have teased a highly emotional ending that promises to bridge the gap to the original Star Trek.

Ferrari has finally unveiled its first EV, the Luce—and it's one of the automaker riskiest bets in decades.

Google has announced its new laptop platform called Googlebook. It’s positioned as a new premium laptop category with a strong focus on AI-powered features. Once again, a company is trying to force AI features into every corner of its products, regardless of whether they're needed or not.

Call it planned obsolescence. Call it the need for greed. But your Android phone will eventually stop being functional and useful, even if there's nothing physically wrong with it. Every Android phone has an expiration date, and once you cross it, your device becomes less secure, less compatible, and harder to trust with important data.

Although you'll hear warnings about cybersecurity-related matters on just about every tech site, most home networks are still a bit too trusting. We believe that malware will never target our router, that private DNS is actually private, and that whatever settings our router came with are good enough for day-to-day use.

If you're using Microsoft Excel on a Windows PC and enjoy using keyboard shortcuts to improve your productivity, you should definitely learn the many ways in which F4 can save you lots of time.

June on HBO Max feels like a true summer streaming event with its lineup built to keep you hooked all month long. Major premieres, diverse genres, and enough surprises to make scrolling the homepage exciting again are coming your way, so keep the popcorn handy.

Exploring older operating systems and trying out different Linux distros on a virtual machine is one of my ongoing hobby projects (I have a lot of those). One of the main issues I've had is shuttling different ISO files between VMs.

Android’s hidden Developer Options menu is full of handy toggles and tools. However, there’s one in particular that could genuinely help get you out of a jam. I hope you never need it, but if you do, you’ll be happy you took 5 seconds to enable it right now.

A workshop may feel incomplete without the right tools, but good lights could also be what is missing. Don't spend thousands on high-end table saws and precision tools if you're still squinting under the dim glow of a single, buzzing bulb. Lighting should be considered the foundation of your workshop, and new lights could improve your work more than any new tool ever will, especially if your garage is your next smart home upgrade.

Most people install VLC and never think twice about it. But there's a quieter, leaner, and frankly more capable player that power users have known about for years, and it's time the rest of the world caught up.

Subscription creep is real, and cloud storage is one of the quieter offenders—easy to set up, easy to forget, and easy to keep paying for even when you probably don’t need it. If you have an old PC you’ve retired, you already have everything you need to run your own private cloud storage and cut that bill down to zero. I did exactly that with a 2017 budget machine, and the result works better than I expected.

E-readers like the Amazon Kindle are hardy devices. Their batteries don't experience excessive wear because you only need to charge them occasionally. E-Ink displays are good for up to 90 million page refreshes, so you're not likely to wear your Kindle out that way either. So how exactly will your Kindle ever outlive its usefulness?

There's a version of your Windows setup where files sort themselves, backups happen quietly in the background, and everything you copy is automatically saved for later. And the best part is that you don't need to install any fancy third-party software to make this happen. PowerShell is built into Windows, and it can automate all the boring stuff for you. To give you an idea of what's possible, here are three scripts that automate the most repetitive parts of my day.

A good soundbar can make a real difference to how your TV sounds, but many people undermine it before they ever hear what it can actually do. Where you put it matters more than most people expect, and the most common mistakes, like tucking it inside a cabinet or letting something hang over it, can turn an expensive piece of audio equipment into something that sounds worse than a budget alternative. This small change doesn't cost anything, and the difference it makes is usually immediate.

Installing an IR (infrared) remote control app on my Symbian-powered Nokia 6600 and then using it to control my flat-screen CRT Samsung TV was one of those “the future is now” moments where I realized my smartphone was indeed a mini computer capable of all kinds of things. I had a blast messing with my mom and friends, changing channels, and turning off their TV with my phone’s secret power. Until I ran out of TVs to mess with.

Excel hides some of its best productivity tools in places most people never think to look. While many people waste time bouncing between ribbon tabs, a quick right-click can handle repetitive typing, data cleanup, visual analysis, and spreadsheet organization much faster. These hidden shortcuts can save clicks and keep you focused on your work.